there’s a wondrous winter light over the small park outside.one that embeds all that is light in a milky white.the sea is an even more wondrous tone of turquoise,perfectly still against the steel grey edge of sky.it is icy cold against the skin but the elephant grass is sprouting green,grows wild and beautiful below the stone staircase towards the nursery.i think again how lovely the double meaning is, translated to swedish,for the english word nursery. daycare and garden centre.buds that will burst into bloom. a school for trees.today is the morning when i leave my son there for the first time.one and a half hours of testing feels like a small universe of time.and me as if suddenly hollow.i have longed for time of my own. now there is no longer that longing.just a hole, and inside it, - what feels like a silent echo.

on the computer screen hovers a spinning rainbow, opposes work.i make a cup of tea and try to capture the moment. just as it is.time stretches out like a lazy cat, striped crosswise.a fire truck drives past outside and the sirens cut through dull thunder. somewhere there’s a fire in the rain, i think.to myself.the tea turns cold while i await time.we haven’t left the house in time for anything since he was born.today i lock the door without abiding time at all.she can catch up with me down the street.cold and wet, i meet a photographer in the nursery hallway.he has photographed all the kids today, he says.i don’t know how he knows whose mother i am.maybe i tell him. i'm too blurred to know for sure.cassius he mumbles and search his big camera,finding his way to the image. he angles the screen to show me.and there he sits on the floor. looking up into the camera and into me.his little body in knitwear. with his ears a bit protruding and syrupy, dark eyes.his mouth is open and his glance too.the hollow in me echoes as from a distant tiny bell.he's gorgeous, smiles the photographer and holds my gaze.i fell matt, but think i’ve got glassy eyes.

a painter helps me carry the pram down the stairs.it has stopped raining andthe sun shoots silvery spears down the sea, through the milky white.and that’s how it is. that little celestial body in knitwear is my aperture.he is in an opening in himself. to the world.through him i sometimes glimpse an abyss whose somber depth turn me faint.and yet, over the whole, hovers an extraordinary tenderness.with love,h

i take a step back, remain at the door,just observe while the others enter their cave suites.i know roughly what the reaction will be.they're family and i have been here before.papa puts his hand on his heart and there it remains,as he walks between the rooms.mama’s eyes fill with tears to the brim.for me it’s an even stronger experience this time.perhaps because they are with us. because i get to experiencethis with most of my family around me.all the churches, temples and monasteries i’ve ever been in,from bali to tuscany and in between, seem to come back to me,seize me all at once and in one single sensation,in the softest of violent blows.and land there. yet another kind of home.*it's october and we’ve traveled back to matera.we live for a while there in the cave city, hidden in the heelof the italian boot, at sextantio le grotte della civita,- the hotel project that is hidden as a true treasure,in the oldest part of matera's sassi, the 'district of stone'.the original floors are exhumed, stone by stone, - and then put back.worn soft they now hide the wifi, underfloor heatingand all the modern luxuries.them and the vaults rising above us, in honey colored limestone,glowing constantly in candlelight.for me it's about how everything is somehow stripped awayin that simplicity of stone, wood and light.it speaks softly to something forgotten.something deep inside, and eternal.to at the same time also feel so completely taken care ofby pace and purity, the beautiful scent,- and the fact that the abundance is so cleverly hidden,also hold some sort of key.as heavy as the key one receives to your cave,ten centimeters of cast iron - as light is the feeling.as lightly i give in.perhaps it is that which is that softest violent. the realization.maybe for how crystal clear and light it is, among all the heavy stone.the realization of the longing for just .. presence.*i think quite a lot about that during october in matera.where the panoramic view is strikingover the ravine of murgia national park.where people lived since the stone age,in monastic orders and shepherd communities.i think about how often we are somewhere far away.how we turn away, so easily, from thatand those, closest to us.leaning in over a mobile phone, screened off before screens.there are no tv-sets at sextantio.it's still and silent.and if one wish, the many and large candlesreally can burn around the clock among the stone.it slows down time. your breathing too.on the terrace, around various old wooden tablesand inside the cave church, when cleared after breakfast;left with only white linenand slumbering trimmed sunflower faces,now facing the candlelights shine,- sit guests scattered as classical music meanders between stones.someone is reading a book over a glass of wine.somebody else the new york times over a pot of tea.papa is occupied for a while in a bowing ritual with a japanese couple.it's not just me who has a church or a temple,suddenly within.one afternoon i lie for a long time soaked in a bubble bathwith a glass of white and just stare at the ceiling.i try to take in the beauty of how the cave embrace me.how clean, dry {!} and safe everything feels around me.i barely manage to.later i also enjoy immensely drifting off to sleepto a film, intertwined, in the blue glow of the i pad.it’s a balancing act. as with most things.myself i'm not balancing steady at all yet.and i’ve definitely got no halo on.if so it’d be quite aslant.but i carry the thoughts with me in my suitcase.and i long.i long for something more. not to go back.but forth.forth into something where more of us find the balance.where we really see each other again.*november’s caught up with us.and we’re back at home by the sea.but first i had to share some october with you.and all that love,h